Fun and frolics

I remember my days in secondary school pretty well. Some were great, some were terrible and some were downright hilarious. However, let me strike one popular belief form the record. They are definitely not the best days of your life. I didn't do drugs, I didn't have sex, I didn't see any of the world, I met fuck all interesting people and I got told to do things I hated doing by people who I thought were intellectually inferior. I'd hate to meet the boring cunt who came up with that phrase. He must have lived a really shit, lonely life after he finished school.

Anyways, I won't bore you with the great or the terrible, but I would like to recount one instance of the hilarious, to serve as an entrée to my anecdote. I remember sitting in Irish class at the tender age of 14, reading through a short story in Réaltra. We fondly referred to our teacher at the time as ET. This nickname stemmed from many things. He was mid 60s, quite short, had large tufts of hair under each eye, foamed at each side of his mouth like a rabid dog, smelt like no one else that was of this world and most significantly had a large extra terrestrial growth on the side of his neck. Yes. Kids can be very cruel at times.

One of the guys down the back of the class asked to be excused and returned 5 minutes later rather excited. After several minutes and various Chinese whispers later, I was told of a 6 inch log of poo gracing the centre of the student’s bathroom floor.

I did what any sane person would do and said "sir, an bhfuil cead agam dul go dtí an leithreas?” ET grumbled and eventually consented. On entering the toilets, I was extremely disappointed. The sight of another person’s excrement on the toilet floor was far less splendid and awe-inspiring than I had imagined.

This trend continued over the course of the next month. Random faeces started appearing in toilets throughout the school at different times of the day on different days of the week.
The felon who was never apprehended soon attained legendary status and was known to all as the phantom crapper or the phantom shitter in some circles, before he finally retired.

In my childhood innocence, I assumed this to be an isolated incident. Then, today, I googled the terms "phantom crapper/shitter" and was astounded by the results. These infamous, mischievous heroes have cropped up everywhere, in virtually every social setting in the world. They really are a universal phenomenon.

So onto the meat of my tale. My most recent discovery was also encountered in a bathroom, though this time, it was in the heart of a large multinational corporation.

After working in an office for 2 years, I do many things as part of a routine. For example, I like to have a coffee and a croissant at 9.30 every morning. I go to the organic market beside my workplace every Friday afternoon. Another is to bring the Irish Times to the bathroom with me and do the crossaire while I'm sitting on the toilet after lunch. Don't get me wrong. I don't have a mechanical, computer operated bowel system that needs relieving straight after lunch every day, but this is the time at which I find myself using the company’s' facilities most frequently.

So one day I was sat on the toilet, working on a clue. Someone entered the cubicle next to me. Bingo! Got it! Now, what's 14 down. Not many more to go. I might even complete this before I've to go back to my desk. Next thing, there's a rustle in the cubicle next to me. The type of sound you hear when there's a bird waddling through a bush. I continue onto 20 across, but now I've noticed the rustling has gotten louder. Now it's accompanied by somebody drawing deep heavy breaths. I must be going mad. 20 across is...

WTF? That's no bird waddling through a bush. But what is it? I know that sound. Years of Hardy Boys, Secret 7 and Famous 5 books come flooding back to me. The clues are there, right in front of me.

And then, it hits me. I know that sound. I'm a fucking guy. I know exactly what that sound is. As much as some might like to deny it, we've all had innumerous dates with Rosie Palm and her 5 sisters throughout our lives. Bashing the bishop, stroking the sausage, choking the chicken or spanking the monkey. Everyone has different names for it. And unless I'm losing my mind, there is somebody in the next cubicle giving himself some lunchtime relief right now. Incessant, panting and rustling is quickly followed by some yanking of the toilet roll dispenser. The only reasons anybody would try to take toilet roll out that vigorously are:

1. To physically rip the dispenser off the wall
2. To create a really subtle diversion

I grab my phone and frantically text one of my friends who works with me to tell him of the goings on. I hurriedly close my paper and scamper out of the bathroom to find him. So we go down grab a coffee and I recount my tale. After much musing, I agree that I must have been imagining it, still gob smacked after the experience.

So several weeks passed by and we're out for a work night out. I've wet the whistle quite a bit at this stage and am mildly inebriated, rambling onto a work colleague while enjoying a cigarette in the beer garden of a pub. Another guy from the office walks by. Then, my workmate turns to me excitedly and says "oh oh, wait til I tell you a story about him". I'm all ears, looking forward to hearing the latest bit of hot office gossip.

"He's the phantom wanker!" Huh? "Yep. He's the phantom wanker". The what?

After much back and forth it's explained there's a gentleman on our floor in the office who relieves himself in the bathroom every day after lunch. I recount my story amidst my colleague's mixture of nods and laughter and putting 2+2 together I get a horrifying realisation that my lunchtime experience was in fact real and not a figment of my imagination as I'd previously thought.

Needless to say, I've put the Crossaire back to mid afternoon.